This article is from page 38 of the 2007-04-24 edition of The Clare People. OCR mistakes are to be expected so download the original SWF or the rendered page 38 JPG
THE battle to ensure that farmers get proper notice before on-farm in- spections ignited this week as Mary Coughlan, the Minister for Agricul- ture and Food, called for 14-days of notice to be given before inspections.
Speaking at the Council of Agri- culture Ministers in Luxembourg last Wednesday, Coughlan said that she is very much opposed to the re- tention of unannounced inspections in the areas of animal identification and welfare and feed controls as pro- posed by the commission.
“I believe that this approach is ex- cessive and unnecessary. I favour a 14-day notice in the case of all in-
spections,” she said.
“T fully accept that it is a critical element of any control system that the inspection visit is implemented in such a way that its purpose is not jeopardised. In my view, however, systematic unannounced inspections are not necessary to achieve this ob- jective but add significantly to cost and inefficiencies at a time when simplification is the aspiration.
“They are also totally impractical in the case of farmers who increas- ingly are part-time and are engaged in off-farm activities.
Minister Coughlan said that while she fully supported the concept of cross-compliance in the context of the Single Payment Scheme and its
extension to the CAP Rural Devel- opment measures this year, it is clear that the system was far too compli- cated and placed an intolerable bur- den on farmers and administrators.
“I believe the approach to cross compliance needs to be dealt with in a “joined up” way at Commission level and therefore the full engage- ment of Commissioners Fisher Boel and Kypriano will be needed to re- Solve these issues,” said the minis- ae
Coughlan said she welcomed the commission’s proposals on toleranc- es for minor infringements, the “de minimis” proposal and the use of the results of existing controls – the so- called “bottlenecks” proposal.
The minister went on to say that, while she noted the proposal for har- monisation of the control rate at one per cent, she is not convinced that this particular proposal is of any benefit in practice, given that the results of checks under the sectoral legislation have to be taken into account and should be further investigated.
“I accept that there should always be a possibility of carrying out some unannounced controls and _ histori- cally Ireland has always adopted this approach where it was deemed nec- ISTE D AA
“IT would therefore ask the com- mission to re-consider its proposals for systematic unannounced inspec- tions,’ she continued.